Amazon shuffles its prices – over 2.5 million times per day

December 16, 2013 | 4:58 pm

Anyone who is a tiny bit vexed by Amazon’s pricing policies might have to be ready for some fast footwork to stay abreast of the object of their ire. Because Profitero, “the leading global provider of online competitor pricing data,” has just released research showing that “Amazon.com makes more than 2.5 million price changes every day,” compared to an average around one fiftieth of that for competitors such as Best Buy and Walmart in the benchmark month of November.

Source: Profitero

Since Amazon seems to be flavor of the month among publicity-hungry research data providers, some of whose reports have attracted a little skepticism, it’s as well to take such figures with a slight pinch of salt. And also, Profitero is eager to demonstrate “why retailers need to be monitoring their online competitors’ prices every day” – through Profitero, naturally. However, Profitero marshals some impressive looking arguments and data to make its case. “With price the number one driver for value-conscious shoppers, Profitero’s analysis also reveals that Amazon.com has increased its number of daily price changes ten-fold over the last 12 months,” the report notes.

“It’s staggering that Amazon.com is making millions of price changes on a daily basis,” adds Volodymyr Pigrukh, CEO and co-founder of Profitero – although every other quote in the report, virtually, focuses on emphasizing how important it is for businesses to use a price monitoring service provider like Profitero to stay ahead.

However, it’s not just Profitero picking up on Amazon’s quick changes – and not just physical goods at issue. As reported in Quartz, Amazon has discounted its cloud services 31 times since 2006. And the impact of Amazon price changes on book sales has been an issue of contention for quite some time now.